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The garden is frozen, we’re in hibernation. The snow is thick on the ground, it’s impossible to work outside, even if we wanted to. We rush outside to fill up the bird feeders and pour boiling water into the birdbaths. Then we sit in the warm and watch to see who comes.
Blue tits, long-tailed tits, coal tits and great tits, bullfinches and chaffinches, blackbirds, wrens, robins and dunnocks, crows, magpies and jackdaws – all descend on the feeders and take what they can to keep them going through the long, dark, cold nights.
We have a pair of pheasants in regular attendance, now. They are tame enough to come running when we throw corn or peanuts out onto the patio. The male has a very ragged tail – many of the barbs are gone from a couple of his tail feathers, leaving the bare shafts to glint white against the brown of the other feathers. We’ve named him Scruffy!
And at night the badgers come, especially the big fat boar.
